


This Thing In Common

by AnnetheCatDetective



Series: Is This Love I'm Feeling [1]
Category: St. Elsewhere
Genre: Episode Related, Gen, Slice of Life, very incredibly pre-relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-01-15
Updated: 2019-01-15
Packaged: 2019-10-10 15:43:09
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,097
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/17428787
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AnnetheCatDetective/pseuds/AnnetheCatDetective
Summary: Jack's POV for post-Rain fic 'Follow-Up'.





	This Thing In Common

**Author's Note:**

> This is the most self-indulgent thing, but because there are some things I really need to write Jack's POV for in GMTN, I figured I'd go all the way back to the beginning and write his side where applicable. Starting with his side of 'Follow-Up' because there's really not a lot going on in his head during 'Between the Breaks' beyond a desire for sleep.

Phil’s on the subject of nutrition, as he and Jack poke at their respective lunches, neither of which feels especially nutritious. It’s just nice to get him going on something. Just generally, really, Jack likes to sit and listen, whenever anyone he likes has a subject they get going on-- it’s why he thinks he and Peter get along so well, because Peter likes to drive a conversation and Jack’s always been more comfortable listening-- but it’s more rewarding, with Phil. He doesn’t like to open up too much. Even just talking about what’s ostensibly a medical topic anyway, he doesn’t much open up at work, and it’s nice to feel trusted. Even if it’s not with much.

 

He’s distracted from their conversation-- and dubious lunch-- by Victor Ehrlich, when he spots him moving through the crowd. It’s hard not to spot him, really. He’s as tall as Jack is, and he holds himself ramrod straight almost all the time. Plus the hair’s a beacon. He’s a colorful dresser, helps with the standing out. 

 

And he’s still wearing the splint to keep his pinky braced, which is good to see, holding his tray awkwardly. He angles himself towards their table when he sees the empty chairs, and Jack flashes him a smile, leaning back from his own tray, and giving a quick little wave to the open seat next to his own. 

 

He likes Victor. They don’t much see each other when they’re working, unless they’re both in the ER at the same time, or in on call, but Victor’s a good doctor. He might be nervous about lectures and rounds with Craig, but in the ER, he’s decisive, quick acting, even commanding. He knows his stuff. 

 

He’s… Jack  _ thinks _ he’s bisexual. He doesn’t know how he knows. But he doesn’t think he’s gay and he really doesn’t think he’s straight, he thinks he’s like him. He thinks they have this thing in common, and… and it just means he likes him more. If Victor is bisexual, then Jack’s not the only one. There’s someone else at St. Eligius who gets it. 

 

Maybe it’s different. After all, Jack’s married, Victor’s single, they’re kind of operating in different worlds, because it doesn’t really matter who Jack could be attracted to-- he only really looks at his wife. Nina’s the world to him, it’s hard to imagine really… noticing other people. For one thing, he’s too exhausted to do a lot of noticing most of the time. He’s never had much of a wandering eye-- always been a hopeless romantic, the kind to put all his eggs in one basket where love and sex went. But if he’s watching a movie or something, he notices if a man is sexy just as readily as he notices a woman. He just… he doesn’t look, in real life. And Victor, by all indications, spends a lot of time looking.

 

And if he looks at both, too, well… it’s hard, Jack knows it’s hard even if he’s spent a good few years not having to worry about it, so he’s a little nicer to him sometimes. It’s not something they can talk about… being a little nicer for seemingly no reason is the best Jack can do for solidarity.

 

“You here for your follow-up appointment?” He asks. Victor’s expression goes blank, until Jack nods to his hand.

 

“Oh-- oh, yeah. Well, no, on your lunch break--” Victor waffles. “Although I guess when that’s over you have to see your real patients.”

 

“Ehrlich, you are a real patient.” Phil doesn’t laugh, but it’s close. Still, he likes Victor, too. For all that he likes to keep a professional reserve, Jack sees the way he looks out for Victor.

 

“Yeah, but-- not a really real patient.”

 

“Come here.” Jack beckons him in, and Victor scoots closer, offering his hand without further protest.

 

“Whaddya say, doc, is it bad?” He jokes, and Jack gets the splint off carefully.

 

“You been icing it?” 

 

Either he has been, recently, or his circulation is bad. 

 

“Yeah, when I get the chance.” Victor says, and in Jack’s experience ‘when I get the chance’ means ‘not often’. “Doctor Craig yelled at me when I stuck a towel full of ice in my pocket because I was late to a lecture and I forgot about it and so I started dripping…”

 

Ah. Well… fear of Dr. Craig is something. He’d been beyond nervous about having to admit to the injury in the first place, Jack had been afraid he’d pass out if he let him try and walk off alone. And dripping throughout a lecture does sound like a little bit of a hazard.

 

“Well, he knows why icing it’s important. He’d yell at you if he thought you weren’t doing it.”

 

“He’d yell at you no matter what you do. That’s your lot in life. Although…” Phil picks up his bottle of orange juice, tries hiding a small smile behind it.

“What?”

“When Kiley nearly slipped and fell because you left a big puddle behind you… I’m not saying I was cheering, but...”

 

Jack’s not sure what Kiley did to earn this schadenfreude, but he doesn’t think he needs to question it, really… he doesn’t see enough of Kiley to know him, but he hears enough from people who do to paint a picture. Not that anyone ostracizes the guy or anything, or that he’s heard anything to make him take against the guy seriously, sometimes they sit together at lunch or say hello in the halls. The idea he has is more that every once in a while Kiley’s insensitive and then it blows over. Not really like Victor, who doesn’t seem to mean to be, who seems to want people to like him so badly, more that he doesn’t think about it and doesn’t care if people don’t like it, but… not that he goes out of his way to be rude, either. Maybe this week Phil’s not his biggest fan, but maybe next week it’ll be all professionally smoothed over.

 

Anyway, Victor smiles a little in spite of himself. He’s brightened every time he’s gotten a smile out of Phil, and Jack wonders… Maybe it’s no different from how he feels-- that breaking through that professional reserve is meaningful, in a friend way. But then, Victor thinks Phil is handsome. Well-- Phil  _ is _ handsome. Jack may only have eyes for Nina, but he’s not blind, Phil’s a good-looking guy, and it’s possible to be perfectly straight and still notice it, how could you not? It’s just the way Victor had brought it up, Jack doesn’t know. Not that he could blame him for suffering a crush, he’d just be sorry for him, knowing it’s something that can’t go anywhere. 

 

“You keep it elevated?” Jack gently bends the injured pinky, stretching the ligaments out and testing the range of motion. Feeling it out while watching Victor’s face-- and Victor’s not the type to hide a wince at all.

 

“Well-- ow!-- Some of the time.” Victor says, which in patient speak, usually also means ‘not very often’... 

 

“Does it hurt moving it that far?” He asks gently. He’s not a sadist, after all, even if Victor isn’t following instructions-- it’s not like he has many opportunities to, with their schedules… he can cut him a little slack, maybe, he just has to be able to draw a line or Victor’s not going to heal as quickly as possible, might even have some problems down the road. Victor should know better, but… 

 

“Not bad. It’s a little stiff, but--”

 

“Okay, well elevate it, and it won’t be that stiff.” Jack gives him a look. He doesn’t get too snippy with him, there’s too much levity for that-- it’s not like Victor doesn’t know this, after all. “Taking naproxen?”

 

“I did! The first day. Well you know, gastrointestinal side effects-- It stopped really hurting, so--” Victor wilts, and just keeps wilting. Gastrointestinal side effects? Hoo boy… maybe if he was on the stuff a few weeks. If he was sensitive. Jack had picked just about the least harsh option out there.

 

“A couple days on naproxen isn’t going to kill you.”

 

“Doctors really do make the worst patients.” Phil chuckles softly, shakes his head with a little smile when Jack shoots him a look as well. He can’t say either of them would be any better… maybe they would and maybe they wouldn’t. He likes to think he’d behave himself and listen to another doctor, even a fellow resident-- that if Peter or Phil or Wayne Fiscus gave him orders, he’d do as he was told. But he guesses you never know until you’re there.

 

At least for this, Victor is compliant. He sits quietly and lets Jack manipulate his hand without a peep of protest. His hand had started out chilly, but it warms up as Jack works with him. Sprain aside, it’s a good hand, but then, it would have to be. Size-wise, not so different from his own, which makes his job easier-- his thumb fits along the curve of Victor’s bent pinky as he pushes him to straighten back out again, to bend back a little and stretch out. About the same as it’ll be when Victor does all this for himself, which just seems like it ought to be helpful. 

 

He wonders if he’d think about Victor’s hands as being particularly good on just anyone, or if it’s because he knows he’s a surgeon that he picks out certain qualities and defines them a certain way. If Victor was just some guy, a banker or something, would his hands seem clever, elegant? Or just big? Would he think of him as awkward instead? But Victor isn’t just some guy, and it’s hard to imagine him as a banker. He’d have to wear less colorful shirts. And his coworkers would find his fascination with surgery a lot weirder...

 

“I want you to keep wearing the splint if you’re going to do anything active, but you should pop it off and do some stretches whenever you have a minute to. And take that naproxen. Just do this for yourself, few times a day, get yourself a tennis ball and squeeze down as hard as you can.” He says, pausing in his ministrations. “Where’s it hurting?”

 

“Extensor digiti minimi.” Victor answers, as dutiful and detached as if he was in a lecture, as if it wasn’t his hand in Jack’s, wasn’t his pain. It must not be too bad, or he must have a better tolerance than you would imagine him to. Aside from a little wincing, he’s fine, and even that tapered off quickly. He should have been massaging himself more, it seems to do the trick right now.

 

“Wish all my patients could be so precise.” He smiles. That’s one area in which doctors don’t make the worst patients. “Okay, just like that.” 

 

Victor nods, and once Jack releases his hand, he practices the assisted stretches before putting his splint back on, and they both return to their lunches. Well… Victor hadn’t really gotten a chance to start-- but then, his lunch wasn’t hot to start with.

 

“Not an olive fan?” He asks, and Jack looks down at his own plate, and the growing pile of them.

 

He hadn’t realized… Well, he’s not, but it’s not like he thinks they’re inedible, either. 

 

“Hm? Guess not. Force of habit, mostly. Nina likes ‘em. I move all mine to the edge of the plate and she takes them. I take her red onion.”

 

“Aw, that’s nice. I wish I had someone to pick off the things I don’t like.” Victor smiles, a soft and dreamy note to it that pleases Jack a little, in a way that’s hard to define. 

 

It’s a silly thing to  claim as a point of pride in a marriage, but… well, what he and Nina have  _ is _ enviable, and for silly reasons as well as serious ones. It  _ is _ nice to have someone take the things you don’t like, or give the things you do. 

 

“That’s how you know you married the right person.” Victor continues. “I mean, and I don’t think I’m too picky-- But it’s nice, that’s all. You know, some people want a person who likes what they like, but if the restaurant forgets to hold something and you’re stuck with a, a pickle you didn’t want or chunks of something you don’t like in a side salad, you know… where are you then? If you say ‘I hate coleslaw’ and she says ‘I hate coleslaw’ and you say ‘it’s love’ and then there’s coleslaw, well… then what?”

 

“I’m sure the Morrisons can rest easy knowing you approve of their marriage based entirely on the least important detail.” Phil rolls his eyes, but Jack thinks it’s kind of sweet.

 

Although… it’s probably a little too much to say so. How sentimental can you get?

 

“No, no, Ehrlich is right. The olives would pile up, it would be a real mess.” He jokes, and it seems to serve to deflect from any mistiness he might be experiencing over Victor’s views on marriage and food.

 

“Or you wouldn’t get anything with olives.” Phil says.

 

“Mexican place up the street puts olives in everything.” Jack shrugs.

 

“I can’t enjoy Mexican food here. It never tastes right. I even miss cilantro, and that just makes guacamole taste like soap. I hated it back when I could get it easy but now… Vijay brought in this thing once, and I  _ swear  _ , it had that same soapy smell, took me right back home. But he said he’d never heard of cilantro, so I don’t know.”

 

“Ehrlich, you’re not exactly go-to guy for food opinions. You eat pineapple on pizza.”

 

“So? What’s wrong with that?” Victor squawks, injured.

 

“I can’t talk to him.” Phil sighs.

 

“What?”

 

“Homesick for food that tastes like soap, pineapple on pizza, you’re ridiculous.” 

 

Jack can’t really get a word in, he’s too slow with conversations, and Victor and Phil bounce off each other, but he wants to say he understands, he does. He didn’t enjoy living in Mexico much, but he did like the food. And there’s a place he goes sometimes, where the food’s more like what they used to eat, but Nina… Nina had hated it more than he did, living there. She likes the place near them, where the food may be Mexican but it’s not like what they had in Mexico. Maybe it’s like another part of Mexico or maybe it’s just American, he doesn’t really know and he doesn’t think it matters. It’s not like he doesn’t like the place up the street! He likes it as much as he likes anything else, but sometimes he misses something… He can make a couple dishes, and Nina doesn’t mind those, if it means he’s cooking, but he knows deep down she doesn’t want authentic. She can’t separate out the memories the way he does, it was all so hard on her, and so sometimes he goes alone to the place he likes and she doesn’t, and mostly he settles on the not-quite-right experience of enchiladas with black olives and the wrong kind of cheese.

 

He wonders if the Mexican food in California would be familiar to him or not. Maybe not, he wasn’t anywhere up near the Californian border, really. 

 

Peter joins them. The slam of his tray on the table has Jack jumping a little, his attention torn from Victor and the thing he’d been about to say about food, and he’s afraid of another black mood, but when he looks at him, Peter’s all smiles. He drops into the empty chair opposite seeming like things are going well for him.

 

“What about food that tastes like soap?” He asks.

 

“Ehrlich likes cilantro, says it tastes like soap.” Phil says. And it’s maybe a little harsh saying it like that, but then, if he held Victor’s hand too much it wouldn’t make things any easier. There’s a certain amount of teasing that’s normal, it’s just Victor never seems really good at that, except with Fiscus. But Jack trusts Phil to know where the lines are with him, they spend enough time together. “And he eats pineapple on pizza.” 

 

“I don’t  _ like  _ cilantro, and it  _ does  _ taste like soap, I just said it makes me homesick.” Victor pouts a little. Hm, maybe Phil didn’t estimate that quite right after all.

 

“I mean if you don’t like pineapple on pizza you can always pick it off.” He says, with a soft smile, thinking back on the earlier conversation. “Give it to someone who likes it.”

 

“No, it has juice, it makes the rest of the thing… fruity.” Peter wrinkles his nose.

 

“And just what is wrong with a little fruit? Fruit’s good for you, who doesn’t like fruit?” Victor draws himself up, injured.

 

“You’re into fruit, noted.” He casts a look over Jack’s way, a ‘get a load of this guy’ kind of look that Jack doesn’t respond to. He doesn’t know how to, when he just feels kind of bad for Victor.

 

“So what if I am? So what if I like what I like? Nobody’s making you eat an entirely hypothetical pizza.”

 

Jack sits there, his own mood tanking, not sure where he could have stepped in to make things nicer, how he might have smoothed things over between Victor and Peter. Peter’s under stress, and it brings out his sharp edges… and Victor’s a good guy and all, but he’s so sensitive to it, like maybe he got picked on too much as a kid and now he’s never sure about being joked around with. And… Peter doesn’t mean anything by it, but it comes out a little sharper from him than from some guys, when he’s having a bad day. And Jack understands what it’s like to have a raw spot you don’t like having prodded at. There’s stuff, if someone teased him about it, he’d react the way Victor is now. Victor’s just got too many raw spots, that’s all, and Peter finds them without trying. Anyone else could shrug it off and say he didn’t mean it, and Victor can’t, and neither of them really want Jack to jump in now and fix something that shouldn’t need fixing, even if he did know how to go about trying.

 

“He doesn’t mean anything, Ehrlich, forget it. Here, you want this?” Phil offers up a lemon bar, with a wry expression as he indicates the remains of his entree. “After what passes for chicken a la king around here, I don’t seem to have much appetite.”

 

“Is that what that was? Glad I stuck with a salad… Thanks.” Victor smiles, and Jack’s grateful for Phil, who knows how to smooth these things over-- who knows when to smooth them over. When Jack always just sits there feeling useless and uncomfortable…

 

He knows if he stepped in to stick up for Victor, Victor might be embarrassed, and Peter would be upset over Jack thinking he was really trying to pick on the guy and taking sides against him, and if he stepped in to say Peter was only joking around, Victor would feel dismissed.

 

“Sure. You’re gonna need something more than a salad if you want to make it through the rest of this shift-- God help you if your stomach starts growling in the middle of Craig’s lecture later.” 

 

With that, Phil leaves them, and Victor dives back into his salad, shoulders hunching, and Jack lets Peter monopolize his attention, since Victor seems done. His hand is taken care of, anyway, and he’s focused on his food, not on the conversation, so Jack hums and nods in a sort of generalized agreement while Peter gets everything out of his system. It’s the least he thinks he can do for the guy, with everything going on for him. On its own he doesn’t think the patient Peter describes is so annoying to deal with, but Peter’s not really upset about that, he’s upset about Myra, he’s upset about money being tight, he’s upset about finding the time to study when they’re sleep deprived and worked to the bone as it is, about not having time for his kids… he’s upset about everything else, but an annoying patient is something he can vent about.

 

Peter leans across the table to take his pile of olives, which is a little weird, but not that weird. They eat off each other’s trays all the time, they all do it sometimes and Peter in particular, they eat with each other most days at least once, maybe two or three times depending, and he’s not shy about reaching over to snag a grape out of a cup of fruit salad or to leave a piece or two picked from a steamed vegetable medley. It’s only weird in that Peter’s never cared about olives. If it’s small pieces, sometimes Jack realizes he’s picking them out and stops, and eats whatever’s left on his meal and usually winds up dumping the rest. If they’re whole maybe he’ll be able to offer them to somebody, but Peter usually doesn’t take them.

 

It’s nothing worth asking about, he doesn’t think it means anything. He does notice Victor’s going through the same song and dance with his mushrooms, separating them out from the rest of his salad, casting the occasional quick looks to the others without verbalizing the offer.

 

“You eating around your mushrooms?” Jack asks, giving him the opening-- one he relaxes into, just a little.

 

“Oh-- yeah. You want ‘em?”

 

“Yeah, sure, if you don’t.” He smiles, spearing one when Victor gives him a little nod and relaxes further.

 

“You’ll eat pineapple on pizza and you won’t eat mushrooms?” Peter asks, amused.

 

“I eat mushrooms. Cooked in things, sometimes. I don’t like this kind, raw, but I eat mushrooms.”

 

Jack doesn’t think about food enough to much consider kinds of mushrooms, beyond ‘cooked’ and ‘raw’. It’s pretty much all the little white button kind. In salads or on pizza. Not too different from the mushrooms in a soup or a casserole, though it occurs to him he has no idea if they’re the same or not. He eats them, that’s the important thing, he can take them off of Victor’s hands. 

 

He reaches over whenever Victor separates out another, spearing it on his own fork and popping it into his mouth, the sort of thing that they kind of stop thinking about after a while, because it’s just part of normal, but… a nice normal. 

 

“What are you doing with that hand?” He asks Victor, as he gets up to bus his empty tray. He suppresses the urge to smile a little too much when Victor stops and stares at the hand, doesn’t want it to seem like he’s laughing at him when he’s not.

 

“Stretches.” Victor nods, again with the tone of a dutiful student reciting the correct answers in a lecture. That’s, he thinks, the real Victor Ehrlich. This earnest guy who cares about giving the right answers. He cares about other things, too-- his aunt, surfing, being liked… but he’s serious and studious and smart, and that’s more who he is than the guy who jokes around about sex. “Keep the splint on for handball. Ice it. Naproxen.”

 

“For at least the rest of the week. And elevate it. Or I’ll put you in a sling.” Jack threatens playfully.

 

“I can’t be in a sling, Craig’ll kill me. I’m surprised he let me live this long.” He whines.

 

“Keep it elevated. Get that tennis ball, spend a couple minutes squeezing. If you want to switch to buddy taping in a couple of days, that’s fine, but you don’t get to decide when you stop bracing it one way or another. No self-treating.” And that last order isn’t so playful, but Victor doesn’t take it hard, he just looks up, eyes wide, and nods obediently.

“Whatever you say.” He promises.

 

“That’s right. Just tell yourself… he’ll kill you even more if you don’t take your recovery seriously.” Jack taps the center of Victor’s chest once, too gentle to be a real admonishing jab, though still assertive enough that he quickly softens the gesture with a friendly touch to the shoulder.

 

“You sure know how to make a guy feel better.” Victor grumbles, but he’s smiling a little, too. It’s enough that Jack’s in a pretty fair mood when he gets back to work.


End file.
